Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Ok, I'm not going to link to all the bloggers talking about this crazy Real ID change (huge compilation of all the blog posts here). The only one I'll specifically mention here is Gnomeaggedon, who has canceled his account. I'm so sorry to see Gnomie go and hope that he keeps blogging. :(

It's funny that this change was announced yesterday because through some other links (why the hell bloggers still link to her, I have no clue), I found myself back on "Ferarro's" blog for shits and giggles. Remember this whole Ferarro debacle? I posted about it twice, here and here.

So apparently "Ferarro" is leaving the game and is doing some grand count down of the 10 reasons "she/he/whatever" is leaving. In one of these latest posts, "she/he/whatever" says:

"But then the Ferarro debacle happened, and I felt sorry for her in some strange way. I know a lot of people want to burn her at the stake as if she murdered a golden bus full of children holding baby unicorns, but the truth was she never said she was Sarah Townsend, you know? She never used her real name or any of her real life information. Ever. She never said where she lived or worked. She never mentioned any of her family. She just copy-pasted a different avatar instead of her own. This isn't me defended what that Ferarro did, by the way. But I understood it. Not condone... just understood."

Wow an actual admission that this Ferarro took pictures from Sarah Townsend and ripped them off as themselves? Did "they" admit this before? I can't remember. It was an interesting read (or a lame attempt at justification?) just as all of this stuff about the Real ID changes and the concerns about privacy were floating around yesterday. And what I thought was exactly what Adam Holisky twittered:

"You know, this new forum system will at least let us know who the real Ferarro is"

Let's make Real ID on the forums only active for this Ferarro person so we can get the real story.

I was thinking about why Blizzard is making this change and I recalled the Forbes story I blogged about last week. Some of the thoughts that went through my head was whether Blizz is trying to force a societal acceptance of gaming by integrating our game with the social networking concept. But when this said society and your gamers aren't ready for this change, and there is no choice in the matter, it just seems like a bad idea.

Anyways, to end of a random note, the pic above is from a very cute new blog, Stuff No One Told Me (but I learned anyway). Some other cute entries from this blog related in my mind somehow to this Real ID hullabaloo:

I've stated in my blog one of the main reasons why my full name cannot be published, while my first name is okay because in the Middle East it's quite normal. Mix them two together and you have only one of me in my city. For political reasons back in my home country, I cannot afford to go around publishing my name. It'd be selfish of me, to put my family in danger.

That being said: I am disappointed. I love this game and my druid. And lately? I've been feeling like giving Blizzard a good kick in the crotch.

What of those under protective care, singer and actors, lawyers and doctors and teachers, etc? We hide behind an alias which protects us when RL isn't too accepting.

As for Ferraro? She/He annoyed the HELL out of me with her righteous attitude. After the whole argument with Averna, I couldn't stand her/him/it. "I work at Blizzard so I'm right and you're wrong".... riiiiight.

With all the real ID changes, and the work being put into it, while things are being slashed from the actual game, I think blizzard is being pushed to make Wow more of a social medium than a game. My predictions are that either we don't get cataclysm until mid 2011, or we get a broken game.

I fear, know, I am pretty certain I know now, that Real ID and Ferraro have one thing in common... they will continue once the anger dies down.

I realise now that we believe we won a great victory and stopped it at stage one, but stage one is already live. The "facebook generation" will already have their friends all signed up and those that view Facebook with concern are now living with it in our WoW.

I'm not 100% sure I have done the right thing by resubscribing... time will tell, but I'm not sure I will be there to see it,